Editor's Letter: Play Ball, Punks!

Where sports and art go together like strikes and . . . gutters.

On Super Bowl Sunday, Death Cab for Cuite founder Ben Gibbard tweeted: "An important gateway to adulthood is the realization one can like both art AND sports."

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Rob Femur, co-founder of Seattle punk band the Piniellas (see album review), may wince at the suggestion that he's entered adulthood, but he's well aware of the chasm that can exist between aficionados of the arts and of sports. Yet Femur, a New York native, thinks Seattle often bucks the stereotype. In fact, he's spent many evenings huddled at bars like Redwood watching M's games with fellow musicians whose sporting preferences are more closely aligned than their musical tastes. "[That] sports in Seattle means so much to so many people may have to do with the fact we are, for many, a transplant city," Femur told me. "Sports are a way of really identifying with a city and a community."

It's in this spirit that we dedicate our monthly music magazine to the Mariners' home opener, Friday, April 13. It may seem like a strange marriage of disciplines, but for Femur—a man who named his band after the beloved former Mariners (and, yes, Yankees) manager Lou Piniella—it makes perfect sense.